Steve Womack Presses FCC Chair Brendan Carr About Addressing Robocalls

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During Wednesday’s House Appropriations Committee hearing, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) questioned FCC Chair Brendan Carr about robocalls.

Transcript

00:00Mr. Hoyer, the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Womack, for his question.

00:05I thank the chairman, and welcome, Mr. Carr, again, to the subcommittee.

00:11And you and I are going to carry on a conversation that we started last year.

00:14If you recall last year, I was discussing the fact that my father,

00:19who'd been in broadcasting for over 70 years, was in the process of winding things down and retiring.

00:24He's now 90, sitting at home, watching a lot of television and calling me.

00:30He retired, but he also took his stations completely off the air.

00:38And there are reasons for that I won't go into here.

00:42But it just reminds me of just how important local broadcast stations are.

00:50And I can probably speak for everybody on this panel.

00:53We all have them, and they perform a valuable service that far too often we're losing today.

01:01The coverage of local news, weather, sports, those kinds of things.

01:05We've had communities hard hit by major disasters where people would normally tune to their local stations

01:12to gather vital information and the like.

01:15Now that you're chairman, and I recall what you said last year, that if we care about these broadcast operations,

01:24we should care about the regulatory environment.

01:26Now that you're chairman, what can you say about the FCC's approach to making sure that our local industry is healthy and prosperous

01:36and worthy of investment?

01:37Yeah, thank you, Congressman, for the question.

01:40I think that the best way to describe my approach to media regulation is to look to empower the type of local broadcasters

01:48that you and your father epitomize.

01:51I think there's a lot of concern in the country right now, which we can talk about,

01:54about legacy national news media, and there's a lot of distrust there.

01:58But there's a tremendous amount of trust when it comes to the local broadcasters.

02:01And that's what we need to empower, and I'm very open-minded to that at the FCC,

02:06and there's ways forward that we can do that.

02:08I'm reminded of a story.

02:09I was in a small town, Cody, Wyoming.

02:11I visited a local radio station.

02:13They had real journalists, real reporters there providing local news, local information.

02:17And a few miles down the road in Powell, Wyoming, there was a broadcast station that didn't have the opportunity

02:24or the scale to do that.

02:25And so they had a Dell laptop effectively pumping in music from Chicago.

02:29And we have rules at the FCC that said the Cody, Wyoming operation could not expand

02:33and bring localism to Powell, Wyoming because of these outdated FCC media ownership rules.

02:39That is one thing that I'm very open-minded on and would like to take on in my time as chair,

02:45is reforming the FCC's media ownership rules.

02:48I think that's an effort well spent.

02:51Let's talk budget for just a minute.

02:54We got the skinny budget.

02:56I didn't see anything from the FCC in there.

02:59We've already talked about the buyout options and the projections of, you know,

03:04whatever percentage of the workforce is going to go away.

03:08And let me just say for the record, I agree with the President's approach in trying to rein in the massive spending

03:16that happens in a place like this.

03:19But when are we going to see a number and what can you live with if you're free to tell us here this morning?

03:27Well, thank you, guys.

03:29I have no news to break on the timing.

03:31Again, currently we're operating under $390 million CR plus additional funding for our auctions program.

03:38And we are on very, you know, stable, comfortable financial footing.

03:41Again, we've had a reduction in FCC FTEs, but that has not held us back at all.

03:46We've had a very, very busy 100 days, and I'm very comfortable with wherever the number lands,

03:50as between the President and you here in Congress, we'll be able to deliver on the FCC's mission.

03:54And then, finally, you mentioned robocalls.

04:01I guess everybody up here has been the recipient of a number of constituent calls regarding robocalls.

04:09Why is it so difficult for us to be able to deal with this nuisance that continues to plague our country?

04:18Yeah, this is exceptionally frustrating.

04:20This is probably the number one issue that I hear about.

04:22We have a very significant war stream at the FCC, and as you heard from Chairman Ferguson at the FTC last week,

04:28they're also working on it.

04:29We're going to continue to deepen that relationship with them.

04:31It's a challenging technical issue.

04:33Once you solve one issue in terms of how these calls are coming in, it pops up in another way.

04:38So we've been doing a bit of whack-a-mole, but we're also putting in place a better technological system across the board.

04:44It's called STIR Shaking.

04:45It's a call authentication framework.

04:47There are some gaps, including because if you're not on a modern network, that authentication system doesn't work.

04:53But we've just sought comment on how do we deal with that when calls traverse old networks as well.

04:58And so we're both doing a whack-a-mole approach, but also trying to put in a system-level way of addressing it.

05:03And we hear loud and clear that this is what people want us focused on.

05:06The challenge we have now is that these operators are using local numbers so that when they show up on caller ID,

05:16it looks like a local call.

05:18And so the predisposition of the constituent is they want to answer that because it's coming from a local number.

05:24But, boy, they have figured out ways around our regulatory process, and I know it's a work in progress.

05:31But I thank you for being here today.

05:33No, thank you.

05:33We'll keep at it.

05:34You bet.

05:34Thank you, Mr. Womack, the chair now.

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